Corruption
by lopsidedcities
Summary: She knows what he is doing to her; the malice in his gaze and the subtlety of his words strip her bare until she begins to see herself through his eyes. Even at sixteen, Tom Riddle proves to be a master in the art of seduction.
1. Part 1

Tom stared out at the landscape rushing by with only mild interest. The chatter of the other boys in the compartment rose and fell around him, muted thrill vibrating in each word.

"... Hexed him right there, blocking up half the train he was. The fat-arse."

Raucous laughter burst forth from each of them as they leaned forward to hear the tale.

"Newby went off blubbering – course, he could barely see, I got him right in the eyes with my Stinging Hex –"

As the others congratulated Wilkes, Tom yawned, quite bored.

"I wouldn't have stopped at a Stinging Hex."

The laughter petered off quickly as they focussed on him, unwilling to miss a single word. The entire display had been for his benefit, in any case. An unlovely blush was colouring Wilkes's spotty face.

"Newby is a filthy Mudblood, I'm sure you all know. He and his kind are an utter waste of space... and air."

He idly examined his wand while they clamoured to agree with him.

"They're letting in far too much rabble these days, Tom."

"Father was saying the same, says the Ministry's losing its grip..."

"The next time I see him..."

"I'm glad," he continued smoothly, "you all think so. By the end of this year Hogwarts will be a, ah, much _cleaner_ place."

"What do you mean, Tom?" Wilkes asked in a voice that was both curious and reverent.

Tom smiled to himself, feeling a kick of pleasure in his belly as he thought of what he had discovered and planned for his sixth year at Hogwarts.

"You'll see."

* * *

The Great Hall echoed with the clatter of cutlery and the hum of conversation. Tom ate leisurely but steadily, ignoring the hunger pangs in his stomach.

He raised his eyebrows at the High Table, and several pairs of eyes followed his gaze.

"I see Professor Kepler has been replaced."

Information poured out of his eager peers as if summoned.

"– that's the new Astronomy teacher, Eleanor Hammond –"

"My father said she's married to the Head of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry..."

"Hammond's a pure-blood," confirmed Rosier, who was knowledgeable of everyone's blood status.

"Interesting choice," commented Tom. "I wonder what she thinks of her Muggle-loving husband's new policies."

He considered, observing the new teacher for a moment. "I must do something about that man... well, I think I shall be taking Astronomy this year, after all."

* * *

The Astronomy tower was dark at this hour, but the starlight pouring in from the small windows lit the staircase well enough to light his way. As he made his way to the top, he found, as he had expected, Professor Hammond with her elbows on the tower ledge, her gaze directed towards the heavens. She had not noticed him.

"Good evening, Professor Hammond."

She jumped at his voice.

"For heaven's – oh hello, Riddle! What on earth are you doing up here?"

"I wouldn't want to miss tonight's spectacle. May I join you, Professor?"

"Why, of course... I'm glad to see you've paid attention in class," she said approvingly. Before them, the vast grounds of Hogwarts lay dark and silent.

"It's just that I've never seen a meteor shower before."

"I daresay you're in luck, then!"

"Indeed."

There was a short pause.

"So, Riddle. How have you enjoyed your first month of classes?"

"Well, I memorized all the assigned reading before arriving at school. Most of my classes are teaching me concepts I've mastered since third or fourth year. I've been forced to pursue other areas of... research in my spare time."

She froze, and hesitated. "I must say I admire your initiative. Most children your age don't really..."

"It's difficult to succeed by sitting still."

"From what I hear, you've had considerable success at Hogwarts, Tom." And she added tentatively: "The cure for restlessness can sometimes be found in rest."

Tom was enjoying this more than he'd thought he would.

"But there's a finite amount of time in one lifetime to achieve one's goals. Would you counsel a dying man thus?"

"...Well..."

Eleanor glanced at him, uncertain of what to say. He was engrossed by the night sky above and quite oblivious to her discomfort.

"Would you not agree that success is measured by the extent of one's advancement in life?"

This sort of discussion was quite past Eleanor.

"You know," she dithered, "you'd have to first know what it was that you wanted out of life... you're terribly young for that."

"Am I? Do you know what _you_ want, Professor?"

Tom met her eyes, and he looked just like any other teenaged boy posing a question in class. She blew out a sigh and considered him anew.

"You remind me of my brother," she said at length, with a hint of nostalgia. "When he was young, he was so determined, so sure. Of himself. And his place in the world."

"What happened to him?"

"Nothing. Well, I suppose not _nothing_. He's got three little ones, works in the Department of Magical Games and Sports at the Ministry. But I digress. You have the same precocious sense of purpose as he did. What are your aspirations, Tom?"

"You won't believe me when I say... if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

She laughed at the cliche, but he only gave her only a small, inscrutable smile.

"You don't seem much like a Ministry man, you know..." she told him, "Oh, I don't mean that you're not capable. I can't think of anyone more talented in this school... it's just that it takes a certain type to want it. And enjoy it. Does that seem strange? But I suppose there are different types of success."

"There is only one kind of success, Professor," he told her quietly.

Her smile wilted. She shivered, and cast her eyes skyward, where the first bright streaks were appearing. They watched the meteor shower in silence.

* * *

The summer that Eleanor Hammond turned sixteen, her mother called her to the bedroom.

"Good luck, Ellie. Here's hoping the dragon doesn't swallow you whole!" her elder brother called with a touch of mockery. Still, he would not have said it where his mother could hear.

She had been Eleanor Prewett then, and she withstood her mother's critical eye until she felt she would burst.

"You're growing up quickly," her mother pronounced, as though it was some sort of disease, and she had just diagnosed it. "Soon you'll be a woman. Although I see that realization has reflected upon neither your behaviour nor your grades."

Eleanor reflected that as long as she didn't end up like her mother, she wouldn't mind being a woman.

"You'll be presented soon, of course. As I was, and my mother before me. If only we could do _something_ about that red hair of yours..."

Eleanor scowled and was met with a glare.

"I am doing this for you, Eleanor! You must be presented before proper Wizarding society if you want any hope of finding a suitable husband. Heaven forbid you marry a half-blood – or a Mudblood! You can be assured that all the other families are already thinking of this..."

She was presented in due time, and it had been unbelievably tedious. Armed with the certainty that there was nothing that would annoy her mother more than marrying badly, Eleanor thus married Lewis Hammond.

* * *

Tom was not looking forward to the Yule Ball, but as a Prefect he was required to chaperone the event. The evening had been fairly successful, and he had retreated to a corner of the garden where he could be at peace. A garden snake found him and he let it coil around his hand. His thoughts turned inward as he contemplated the elusive chamber which had so recently occupied his thoughts like nothing else. The calm was interrupted by a muted sound nearby and he leapt to his feet, rage pulsing through him at the intrusion.

"Who's that? I'm a Prefect, _show yourself_!"

He saw her bright hair first as she peered drunkenly at him through a rosebush.

"Oh, it's you. I was wondering who..." Eleanor's speech was slurred and she swayed uncertainly. "Riddle. Tom. Is that your pet?"

He put the snake in the grass and willed himself to remain calm.

"Are you alright, Eleanor?" he inquired, giving her his hand as she struggled through the bushes. He guided her to the stone bench.

"Tom, Tom, Tom. What are you... I didn't think anybody would be here. Children your age love nothing more than to engage in the... festivities."

"It seems we both crave a respite from the festivities."

She looked at him standing before her, a shadow in the night, and was aware of how tall he was.

"Sit down, Tom. Do tell me, how is your _research_ progressing?"

He seated himself next to her. "Not as well as I had hoped. There are several... kinks that I must straighten out before my plans can – before I can realize my goals."

"Oh? How dreadful. To have your ambitions stoppered in your youth..." She conjured a glass and refilled it with something that was no doubt alcoholic, and then downed it expertly.

"Would you like a drink? It helps –"

"I'm underage," he reminded her, his mind elsewhere.

"You are?"

He paused. "No," he admitted. "Excuse me, I was thinking of Muggle laws. They don't apply here."

"Thank goodness. Have a drink, Tom." She leaned in, glass raised, and he could smell the alcohol she had consumed and the perfume on her neck. "Have a drink, it's so unfair."

"Yes, it is."

She sluggishly considered what he had said. "You live amongst Muggles?"

Tom did not answer for a few moments. "Yes."

"Oh, I'm so sorry – I had assumed – well, you _are_ a Slytherin," she said, lowering her voice to a theatrical whisper.

"I am. Which house were you in, Eleanor?"

"Hufflepuff. Oh don't look at me like that!"

"Like what?" he asked patiently, but she wasn't really listening to him.

"My mother nearly _died _of shame. She said... she said I had proven once and for all that I could never live up to the Prewett name. _Her family_ had been in Slytherin for centuries, or so the old hag said. Ha. There never was a better feeling than seeing her face the day I announced my engagement!"

"And why was that?"

"Lewis – my husband – is a Muggleborn. The old guard, they're so set in their ways, even if it means marrying your smelly second cousin..."

"Is it so terrible to desire to keep one's bloodline... select?" he asked her mildly.

"It is a desire that borders upon the fanatic, Tom. You've no idea how important it was to Mother... to these people. God, her face when I told her!" She giggled. "I just couldn't muster that level of passion for something so _irrelevant_ – my mother was batshit insane, in any case. Still, I paid for that one look with sixteen years of marriage. Not that _that_ counts for very much..."

He said nothing. What was there to say?

She tilted close again; close enough for him to feel the heat of her skin. A tendril of her red hair brushed his cheek. "You understand what I mean, don't you? Oh you must," she whispered into his ear. "Tell me Tom, what are you thinking?"

Tom could not tell her he was picturing himself screwing her senseless atop the stone bench. As it was, she was drunk and barely coherent, and he was expected in the Great Hall for clean-up duties.

"I think that you should go home now."

"Why? The night is not yet spent."

His hand travelled up her bare arm and looped around her neck, thumb brushing against her earlobes. He looked her in the eyes, and something in his gaze made her uneasy.

"I think you know why."

* * *

_DUN DUN DUN! To be continued..._

_Seriously though, you _know_ Tom Riddle Jr. would have no qualms about bedding his own teacher if it means getting what he wants. And he'd go about doing it on his own terms.  
_

_As always, review your heads off!_


	2. Part 2

_Enjoy! _

_

* * *

_Eleanor awoke the next morning feeling dizzy and parched. A glance at the clock told her it was already midday. She lay in bed for a while like a child feigning sick, before deeming it time to venture to the kitchen for some hangover relief. Surely those cheerful little house elves knew some sort of... recipe for a cure, or something.

The hallways outside her quarters were usually deserted. Not many students came by this way, as there were no classrooms nor any interesting artifacts like those found in other parts of the castle.

Tom Riddle was leaning casually against the wall facing her door, watching her. They regarded each other, she with a touch of nausea.

"You haven't been there all night, have you Tom?" It was a nervous joke, and he did not smile.

"I just came by this morning to see how you were."

"Um..."

"After last night, I mean."

"Oh," she said uncomfortably. The enormous pitcher of water she had drunk was making itself felt, among other things. "About that..."

He moved closer until he could have reached out and patted her shoulder, and she fell silent. "I've also come for another reason," he admitted.

"Oh?"

"I wanted to invite you to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. We'll be having dinner beforehand."

"...Well..."

"I found our conversation in the garden most... stimulating." His voice was low and smooth. "I mentioned to Professor Slughorn that you knew Lewis Hammond quite well. He was extremely interested."

"Who else is going?" she asked, swallowing.

He waved his hand carelessly, as if it didn't matter. "Students. Friends of the professor. A few of the other teachers. You'll be in good company, Eleanor."

She bit her lip, and then her fingernail, looking at him.

"And if you are going down to the kitchens, I must advise you that they've changed their passwords," he told her, turning to leave. "Try tickling the grape cluster."

"Tom, wait," she blurted out, "you haven't told me –"

He looked back and said, "Next Friday. I'll come and fetch you." He gave her a small smile.

* * *

The holidays were near, and the children were becoming increasingly rowdy. The younger ones excitedly compared their winter plans and chattered endlessly in classes, even going so far as cheering aloud when it began to snow. In class, Eleanor handed out treats from Hogsmeade's sweetshop, which, as she confessed to Dumbledore later in the staffroom, had garnered unintentionally hilarious if exhausting results. The older children, forced to pay attention in preparation for their OWLs and NEWTs, were more subdued. Still, a sense of excitement suffused the school, and even the news that trickled in every day of the rapidly worsening Muggle war did not dampen the general good mood.

"Children, your star charts were fantastic," Eleanor was saying to her class, remembering to be generous with praise. It was night and the small group had gathered on one of the tower used mainly for Astronomy class.

She sorted through the pile of start charts and displayed one before the class. "I particularly liked this one – such attention to detail. And what beautiful script. Well done, Mr. Riddle. "

The lesson was beginning quite well, and it was a clear, perfect night. She pointed out that a few of Jupiter's moons were visible, and the class leaned into their telescopes.

"Professor Hammond, look at that! Do stars usually do that?"

Kathy Ackerman was looking not into her telescope but into the distance, where Eleanor made out small flashes of light. She squinted. Odd. They appeared not in the skies but closer to earth. Almost as if...

"Those aren't stars," Greta Puckle said scornfully. "They're bombing the English countryside."

"What's bombing? Some type of fireworks?" asked Alastair Grunion.

"Children," Eleanor hushed. "Bombing, Mr. Grunion, is a type of Muggle warfare device. Similar to, er... guns. Or arrows," she added hastily, as he opened his mouth again. "I believe the British Muggles are currently engaged in a very complicated and messy conflict with... some other Muggles. Foreigners or that sort. Now, if we can return to the south-west quadrant..."

"My dad says we're fighting the Jerries. He was in the Home Guard before his leg gave out," added Davey Newby brightly, which no doubt translated into so much gibberish for those who were not Muggle-born.

A whispered comment from the back row caused Newby to flush amid hushed snickers.

"Class!" said Eleanor sharply. "War is nothing to laugh at. The Wizarding world is facing its own crisis... I assume most of you have heard of the Dark Wizard Grindelwald...?"

She tried to remember what her husband had told her. "Grindelwald has gained enough power in the other European countries to count as a very real threat to Britain. What is happening to our Muggle neighbours may soon reflect our own fate."

"Professor," piped up a voice from the back, and she looked up and met a pair of dark eyes. It was Tom. "Is it true that you are _well acquainted_ with the Head of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry? What is the Ministry's position on Grindelwald's... ideology? Does he really pose so large a threat to Wizarding society?"

Eleanor toyed with her wedding ring, thrown off by his question.

"What are you trying to say, Mr. Riddle? That his ideologies are not as damaging as they appear to be?"

Tom shrugged, going for a look of naive curiosity. "Grindelwald has always undertaken his actions for 'the greater good', as he likes to say."

She shook her head, and countered: "But for whom, we must ask ourselves." And she was really saying this for the benefit of the entire class. No need for them to get the wrong idea, she thought. It had not occurred to her that Tom was playing with her. "For himself, or for all wizards, as he would like us to believe? The Ministry does not support Grindelwald's violent actions, nor those aspects of his credo which are harmful..."

"Harmful in what way, Professor?"

"They are harmful to Muggles, Mr. Riddle. And possibly Muggle-borns."

A particularly bright flash interrupted them and a low rumble, as if of thunder, sounded.

"Don't worry," she reassured them, "Hogwarts is protected from the bombs."

Eleanor looked back and became disconcerted when she saw that Tom had not looked away from her in all the commotion. The barest hint of a smile played about his lips, and she realized she was sweating in the December night.

"Is that why the Head of Magical Law Enforcement recently introduced harsher sentences for those who would harm Muggles?" he asked.

So carefully were his questions framed and so courteous was his manner that the rest of the class did not seem to notice the stir of sexual agitation between them.

"That measure has been long overdue," she persisted.

"Would you say that knowing Muggles have always escaped punishment – or even been rewarded – for violence against wizards and witches?"

"They can sometimes be... ignorant in those matters. _We_ are not."

"So are wizards enlightened, morally – even... _superior_? Is that what you mean, Professor? That Muggles are to be protected because they have lesser –"

"Tom!" she interrupted in warning. His eyes flashed. "I said no such thing." A rustle, and then a low murmur had started in the class at his words.

"I gather you support him, then?" he said, returning to her husband. "His policies have not garnered much support among many members of the Wizarding community."

She released a pent-up sigh that she had not known she was holding. "We should all support our government."

"I don't quite follow, Professor." Tom held her gaze and then his eyes dropped down the length of her body. It was as obscene as if he had run his hands on her instead. Inside her head, Eleanor screamed.

"Excuse me –"

She dropped all pretence and nearly ran towards the entryway that led to the staircase of the tower. Only when she was pressed against the cool, soothing stone of the tower wall did she allow herself to close her eyes. She did not think she could have stood a single moment more before the silent class while Tom questioned her beliefs with his cold, critical statements, horrible statements cloaked as innocent classroom inquiries. She twisted the ring on her finger, around and around and around, thinking of how true and right each of his questions had seemed, and how weakly and ineffectively she had replied. She thought of her husband's infuriating Muggle mother.

"Professor, are you alright?" whispered a voice in the near-dark. It was Newby, concern evident on his round face. Did the other children tease him because he was heavy? He hesitated, and then told her, "Riddle and his lot are utter tossers, Professor. You mustn't let them know they got to you."

Eleanor heard Tom's voice echoing within her, thought of the tilt of his chin, his half lidded eyes just before he delivered another cutting barb. She knew what he wanted, knew by the malice in his eyes and the softness of his voice and the subtlety of his words. In the pit of her stomach, something rose in her chest until she could no longer breathe.

"Thank you for you concern, Mr. Newby," she finally said. "I will – I'll be up shortly. Go on..."

She listened to Newby's footsteps as he left and imagined herself pierced by Tom Riddle's gaze while his mouth spewed smooth, sweet venom, insatiable sexual desire swelling in each syllable. Heat flared up within her and she saw before her his long, pale fingers flexing – and Eleanor knew, _knew_ with absolute certainty, that she wanted him.

_You mustn't let them know they got to you._

He would take her and consume her utterly if she relented now. It would be unacceptable. Eleanor looked at her watch and saw that there were eighteen minutes of class left.

* * *

_To be continued... don't forget to review and critique!  
_


	3. Part 3

Tom walked along the badly lit halls, every sense alert for the sight or smell or sound of anything unusual. Dippet had recently drawn up a new schedule for the Prefects and Tom was unused to this part of the castle. Truly, Hogwarts still astounded him in its vastness. He could not count the number of hours he had spent out of bed, exploring promising parts of the castle he had spotted in daylight but would – most mysteriously, vanish or switch places in the dark of the night.

He slowed his walk and quieted his footsteps when he heard the faint sound of feminine voices emanating from a room further down the corridor. It was past midnight; no students were allowed out of bed at this hour. He dearly hoped that whoever it was turned out to be in Gryffindor, the better to dock points from.

"Myrtle the moron," a voice from the room floated out, gleeful cruelty ringing in each word, "_why_ are you still following us? I thought I told you to go _away_."

Myrtle was clearly struggling not to cry. She screamed: "But I don't know the way back, Olive! You're the one who told me to meet you here – you said –"

"Shhhh!" a chorus of voices hissed. "You're going to get us found out!"

"I don't _care_!" Myrtle shouted, and blubbering, ran out of the room and straight into Tom, who was standing outside. She looked up into his face, an expression of panic and fear upon her own spotty face.

"Are you alright, Myrtle?" he asked her gently, steadying her arm. She blushed when he touched her.

"Oh, Tom –"

"What are you doing here at this time of the night?" he murmured, peering over her head, into the darkened room from which she had run out of. A group of girls were huddled within, goggling back at him. "_Lumos_! Come out of there, all of you," he ordered.

As they filed out, Myrtle exchanged a particularly poisonous glare with a tall, thin girl who seemed to be the leader of the group, judging from the way the other girls cowered behind her.

"Olive Hornby tricked me," sniffed Myrtle, pointing a dramatic, accusing finger at the girl. "She called me a moron and told me she was going to leave me alone out here to get me in trouble."

"That's a lie!" said Olive with a pout. "I saw Myrtle sneaking about and I decided to see what she was up to... I think she was trying to steal something –"

"No I wasn't –" Myrtle said, sputtering with indignity.

Tom knew at once that Olive was lying, as he gazed into her eyes and quickly searched her mind for falsehoods. What enraged him was that she actually thought _he_ could be fooled by such a weak excuse, and that she had _dared_ lie to him. He fingered his wand, silently running through a list of his favourite curses... but there was really only one course of action he could take at this moment in time.

"Lying to Prefects is not tolerated at Hogwarts, nor is sneaking around in the dark after hours. I'm afraid that I will have to report this to Professor Dippet," Tom said softly to Olive Hornby and her friends, who emitted various squawks of outrage. "Return to your beds _at once_, or there shall be further consequences. I will deal with this in the morning," and his voice rose and was so commanding that they mutely took off for Ravenclaw tower at once, averting their gazes from his eyes.

"Thanks, Tom," Myrtle said thickly when they were alone.

He frowned at her. "I'll have to speak to Professor Dippet about you as well, Myrtle. Rules are rules."

"I know. I'm just glad Olive's in trouble too, for once." Her face was grubby with tears and she gazed up at him with something close to adoration. _Disgusting_, he thought. _Killing you would be so easy..._

He swallowed his feelings with practiced ease and gave her an encouraging smile. "Would you like to get cleaned up? Perhaps there's a restroom you can use..." he suggested.

"There's a bathroom off there... I go there to cry whenever I get upset. It's quite good," she said, and added shyly, "although... it _is_ a girl's bathroom."

"I can wait for you outside, if you'd like," he told her, a wide smile spreading across his face as he realized the mistake he had been making for the past several months. The girl's bathroom... of course he had never looked there! Why would he have? But it was a very real possibility that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets would be hidden in such a place. Hadn't he read that Salazar Slytherin thought girls much more trustworthy than boys? Pleasurable heat spread through his body; the prize he sought was so close. Salazar himself would be proud.

"Lead the way, Myrtle."

She sighed appreciatively, her thirteen year old heart aflutter with admiration. He was _so_ good and brave... and so very handsome, especially with that soft dimple that appeared in his cheek when he smiled at her. "You're so kind, Tom..."

* * *

That night Eleanor prepared a bath. She generally avoided the mirror, but this time she stripped and stood before it and tried not to wince. For a fleeting, mad moment she was convinced that her body was that of another woman, someone who had endured toil and hardship since the moment of their birth. Her skin was as pale as the white tile beneath her, and had the look of a corpse; waxy but lined. Brittle red hair laced with gray curled about her shoulders. The marks of age scarred her thighs and waist, and her breasts had long succumbed to the pull of gravity.

When, exactly, had her beauty fled? She bared her teeth at the mirror and saw, in a dreadful flash of clarity, the face of her mother gazing back at her, customary sneer fixed in place. Eleanor blinked; the illusion disappeared. But the uneasy feeling it had brought lingered and echoed in the small, bright room like a whisper.

She recalled her mother, who could barely stand to be in the same room as Father unless there was a drink in her hand, who had carefully, obsessively covered her auburn hair with blonde dye and who had been, above all, so unhappy. There had been a moment, in her youth, when all joy must have vanished and left in its place only bitterness. Bitterness and despair, and the unwanted promise of a long, empty life. The identical years stretching ahead without hope. But, no. There had been a time when her mother had thrown off that mantle of misery and smiled and laughed just like she must have done as a young girl.

She thought of when she had turned five, of being taken by the hand to Diagon Alley, and though the memory itself was fuzzy, the excitement of seeing such a bright, noisy place that was as much unlike her home as possible – that was still fresh and indelible. Her mother had taken her, just the two of them, as she had whispered conspiratorially to Eleanor with an intimacy that had been wonderful and surprising. Eleanor had exclaimed over the new set of robes her mother donned and her freshly coiffed hair for she had looked more beautiful than ever before ('This? It's nothing, just something I saved from last season,' Mother had murmured modestly). They had gone to the apothecary and the book shop and Gringotts, and Eleanor had gazed through all the windows and listened to every bit of passing conversation with both delight and hunger. It seemed her severe mother had many friends in the Wizarding world, and with them she showed a warmth that she had never shown at home: kissing and embracing a young man in particular, a shopkeeper of a used bookstore who had bought ice cream for both Eleanor and her mother and who had had a pair of dazzling sea-green eyes.

Fool, thought Eleanor contemptuously, pressing her hands against the mirror and closing her eyes from the sight of her own body. Of course Mother had gotten caught, and the affair revealed, and she was punished, for her mother had never taken her out again, had rarely left the house ever after. What happiness she had found in the young man's arms had vanished and what was left was an empty husk of a woman, stripped of goodness and bitter and hard.

How she had come to understand her mother so well, she did not know. But fear – irrepressible fear gnawed at her and drove her mind apart like a wedge. The knowledge that their lives were not so very different, after all. The fear lingered that she might suffer the same fate, that despite all she had done and worked for she would become her own mother. Eleanor opened her eyes and saw the pale haggard face staring back at her. She imagined smashing the mirror with gusto and watching the pieces explode outward, then grinding the pieces to dust with her foot and laughing. A giggle escaped her throat like a hiccup and she silenced herself immediately, horrified.

* * *

The neatly patched schoolboy robes, lent to him by the school, had been replaced with a sober gray suit that was only slightly too short at the sleeves. It made Tom look older. Eleanor had opted for the nicer set of her teacher's robes, as she had not bothered to pack any dress robes. In truth, the fancy gowns she donned for Ministry functions would have seemed out of place at Hogwarts.

He had come to her on the night of Slughorn's party and waited patiently outside the door until she appeared, struggling to conceal the trepidation on her face. As they made their way through the empty hallways, she chattered incessantly about classes and grades and holidays. Tom smiled to himself when she hurriedly interrupted him for the third time. She was bending and cracking at the seams, like a wand about to be snapped in two. It was the finality of the act, the irreversibility of what was about to occur, that interested him and gave him a sort of sadistic pleasure. There would be no going back.

At the door to the party she hesitated, breaking off mid-sentence. Voices and laughter floated out from within and met their ears. It sounded vaguely sinister to her.

"If I didn't know better Eleanor," he told her smilingly, "you seem nearly anxious."

"No," she fretted. "I'm used to parties..."

"I can take you back to your room, if you'd like."

Tom moved closer, eyes boring into her. Her breathing stopped but her heartbeat rose, so that she felt quite light. He smiled at her. And moved away. He was playing with her again.

She appraised him as clinically as she could, and saw only what the others saw as well: a considerate young man, endearingly mild-mannered, intelligence and scholarly curiosity sparking in his eyes. It was little wonder he was the Headmaster's golden boy.

He could have been her son, the little orphan Riddle. It shocked her, suddenly, to realize that he had never known a mother or a father, that he had never known love or warmth or been held as a child. She wondered if he even knew what he lacked. If he cared. How different he would be, if she had indeed been his mother. She thought of her own, and again felt the heady mixture of triumph and regret. He was waiting for her to answer.

Eleanor said weakly, half-relenting: "I wouldn't want you to miss it."

"It would be no trouble at all."

Something glittered in his eyes. It was clear what would happen if they were to turn back and go to her quarters.

"No, no. Let's go in."

His smile widened.

* * *

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